Word: ernest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Fifteen years ago, Dr. Terry Ernest, an ophthalmologist, had to tell his own father the news that he so dreaded giving his patients: Your eyesight is progressively deteriorating, and there is no cure for the condition. Despite tremendous medical progress in treating many forms of vision loss, Ernest could do nothing but watch as his father's eyesight slowly faded, eventually robbing him of the pleasure of pursuing the pages of his favorite books or seeing the smile on his son's face. "At one point, I actually apologized to my father for all the tuition he'd paid," says...
Earlier this year, a team of University of Chicago physicians led by Ernest and surgeon Dr. Samir Patel performed a complex operation on Pearl Van Vliet, a retired medical-center receptionist who was suffering from the same condition that had deprived Ernest's father of his sight. That disease is known as age-related macular degeneration, in which the eye's macula, a remarkably sensitive structure in the middle of the retina, gradually loses its ability to distinguish shapes and colors...
...delicate procedure that lasted more than two hours, Ernest and his team tried a new and hopeful approach to macular degeneration. They first took cells from the retina of an aborted fetus, then surgically transplanted them into Van Vliet's severely impaired left eye. Since the operation, the transplanted cells have begun to proliferate, forming minute projections that stretch toward Van Vliet's macula. For Ernest, a large, affable man of 62, the weekly ritual of scrutinizing the eye scans that chronicle Van Vliet's recovery from surgery proved intensely satisfying, not only professionally but also because of his frustrating...
Even now, however, Ernest and his colleagues cannot be certain they are on the right track. Too many promising treatments for macular degeneration, they caution, have failed to produce discernible benefits. But if they--and other researchers around the world--are on to something basic, then eventually ophthalmologists will be able to help their patients, perhaps not to cure macular degeneration (that would be too much to hope for), but at least to stop its relentless progression...
...when all they have done is put off the real task of cutting government spending to a manageable level. The financial threat to Medicare and Social Security is looming on the horizon, but all the politicos can focus on is getting re-elected. Term limits are the only answer. ERNEST J. ALLEN Dunnellon...